Remembering the miracle: We see with our brain, not our eyes!

Are we really complex biological organisms or spiritual beings residing in a time in a physical body? This is for you to decide.

What we believe is made manifest to us, through us. Most importantly, each health challenge we face will be perceived differently according to our beliefs, and we will act differently depending on them.

For a person who believes he is a spiritual being in a physical body, each health challenge will be seen as an opportunity to learn something about his or her consciousness. Why has the disease manifested? What thought pattern needs correction for healing to take place in harmony with the physical expression’s innate healing intelligence?

Visual dysfunction is so commonplace today that we hardly stop to consider the metaphysical implications; short sightedness (myopia), long-sightedness (hyperopia), glaucoma, cataracts and so forth as just accepted as the norm. It’s accepted as being either hereditary or a result of getting older, an inevitable decline.

“To the degree that the collective consciousness is accepted, absorbed and internalised, to that degree will you accept it as your reality.” Conversations with God, Book 3

The best-selling book, Heal Your Body, which later became You Can Heal Your Life, was written by world renowned healer and teacher Louise Hay back in the early 1980s. A timeless masterpiece, the little book of metaphysical causations points out, for example, that cataracts represent the inability to look ahead with joy, that myopia represents fear of the future and long-sightedness represents fear of the present.

Whilst this may not always be true, it makes the clear point that body and mind are one by highlighting the interconnectedness of the two. What are we choosing to see, or not see? How is our perception of life limiting our choices and our health?

So, do we really need glasses, contact lenses or eye surgery? Are we looking for a mechanical fix to a spiritual imbalance?

We have forgotten that our eyes do not see, it is the brain that “sees”. The eyes are the organs that gather visual information for the brain, like our hands gather tactile information which the brain interprets. The eyes receive high frequency light signals which pass through the visual system of the brain and we magically “see”. Indeed, blind people who gain their sight later on in life have to learn how to interpret the signals they are receiving since they cannot make sense of them initially.

The brain’s interpretation of our reality is so fast that we no longer question what is happening but have you ever been looking for something that was right in front of you but you couldn’t see it? I’m sure many, if not most, of us have had that experience on at least one occasion. This experience shows us that we are seeing with our brain.

The visual system, as part of the brain, is at the top of the chain of command and needs to be addressed directly. By bringing our consciousness to the visual system, we can dissolve negative patterns at their source allowing eye, brain and body functions to become integrated as they were meant to be.

I recently came across the brilliant work of Peter Grunwald who has created an amazing system of healing through the visual system called “Eyebody”. In fact, he has mapped out the entire body as related to the eye, and teaches people how to let go of wearing glasses and contact lenses, either permanently or with dramatically less reliance on them.

He takes great care to point out that clear sight is a secondary, not a primary, function of the visual system; and that habitually inefficient ways of using the visual system are what cause difficulty with our eyesight, imbalances in our emotions and functional problems in our bodies.

The primary function of the visual system is co-ordination of our internal world, our physical, emotional and mental states. Indeed, the visual system and pathways pass through each of our three brains, reptilian, limbic and neocortex, which is why it is so fundamental to our overall wellbeing.

Each layer of the brain has a specific, overall relationship to the visual system. The reptilian brain relates to the physical functions of the body, the limbic brain relates to the emotional functions and the neocortex the mental functions.

Peter says that “symptoms or malfunctions in the eye, brain and body are the manifestation of underlying misuse of the visual system”. He speaks of Conscious Depth Perception as a spiritual function that integrates and co-ordinates all three parts of the visual brain.

My work with Spiritual Response Therapy has taught me just how fundamental the eyes and brain are to the over wellbeing of the client. High Self always carries out brain restructuring, or brain repatterning, towards the end of a clearing session, ensuring that the logical and gestalt functions are being performed on the correct side of the brain and that eye positions are testing strong. The degree of peripheral vision is also checked and corrected.

If the visual pathways are not being activated properly, or not at all, our overall functioning will be impaired whether we are aware of it or not, resulting in poor eyesight, bodily pain, an inability to think clearly, and/or disconnection from self and others.

Wearing contact lenses or having surgery, only deal with the symptoms and not the cause of dysfunction. Let us remember that everything that has manifested externally is a result of choices made internally.

I would like to conclude with a story of pure faith, which allowed a blind woman to see. Madame Bire of France, recorded in the archives of the medical department of Lourdes, France was blind, her optic nerves atrophied and useless. Yet, she visited Lourdes and received an instantaneous, miraculous healing. Ruth Cranston, a Protestant woman who investigated and wrote about healings at Lourdes, wrote an article in McCall’s magazine in 1955.

“At Lourdes she regained her sight incredibly, with the optic nerves still lifeless and useless, as several doctors could testify after repeated examinations. A month later, upon re-examination, it was found that the seeing mechanism had been restored to normal. But at first, so far as medical examination could tell, she was seeing with ‘dead eyes’.”

Life is mirrored back to us through our perspective; disease is not real; everything can heal.

Creating With Joy: The BE-DO-HAVE Paradigm

In this time-space reality that we currently live in, many of us are still dictated to by others and live our lives accordingly, within very narrow limits. This unnatural tendency is set and maintained by the underlying expectations of others. The expectation to be a daughter or son, wife or husband, mother or father, friend, lover, colleague, and so forth, is usually based upon what those around us feel we must do to prove ourselves.

Our global focus on materialistic values alone also fuels in each of us, as well as our children growing up, the unconscious belief that we are failures if we do not seek to climb to the very top of the ladder; not the spiritual ladder, of course, but the material ladder! And so our disconnected, fragmented way of experiencing life is perpetuated, with expectations that are burdensome and soul destroying.

We all run around trying to have or acquire certain things, doing many things at once, sometimes being in the flow but, quite often, feeling frustrated, resentful and burnt out. That is, until we recognise a deeper truth, a higher one. Once we get a glimpse of our Divine nature, it is only a short time before we can let go of our negative programming and dysfunctional lives.

As Shakespeare so eloquently put it to us a long time ago, “To be or not to be, that is the question.”

Most believe that if they “have” a thing (more time, more money, more love), they can finally do a thing (write a book, take up a hobby, go on a vacation, buy a home, strike up a new relationship), which will allow them to “be” a certain thing – happy, content, peaceful, prosperous etc.

And yet, this unconscious belief fights against the nature of the Universe! Everything is within us, but we must first know this before we can experience it. Knowing always leads to experience, not the other way round. This knowing is borne of intuition, not logic, because the logical mind cannot understand it.

If we wish to be peaceful, wise or compassionate, we must “be” this first and all else follows naturally. We start doing things from this place of being and this ultimately brings us the things we’ve always wanted to have, without the attachment to those things. "Being" something sets us free and our desires become statements of preference to the Universe, not needy demands that constrict the flow of energy to us and through us.

It is far better to have preferences in this world than needs because the creative power has flow. Being needy restricts the flow of energy and limits you as to how the universe will bring you the essence of your request. If we can learn to trust, the manifestation of our requests will be greater than we imagined because the unconditional love of God wants us to have what want.

So many of us are saying to themselves “if only I had a little more time, a little more money, I’d be truly happy”. However, we are failing to notice the connection between choosing to not be happy right now and the less than satisfactory results that are a consequence of that choice.

The person who is being happy seems to have the time to do everything that matters to her/him, all the money necessary and enough love to feel complete joy in doing anything and everything s/he chooses.

“Deciding ahead of time what you choose to be produces that in your experience.” –Conversations with God (Book 3)

If you act as if you are something, you will draw it to you. You become that which you act out… but the action must spring from an inner knowingness; your actions must be sincere or the benefit of the action is lost! After all, you can’t fool yourself, can you?

Natural Law requires the body, mind and spirit to be united in thought, word and deed for the process of creation to work. Thus, if you are choosing to do something for the sake of it, stop. It’s doing it the hard way! Sit down and take a moment to ask yourself why you are choosing to do what you’re doing. Does it feel right, does it bring you joy?

Recognise your connection to the Divine and that all possibilities are open to you from that relationship. Just as a fetus is dependent on its umbilical cord to receive nourishment from its mother, so too are we dependent on SPIRIT for our nourishment.

If you are stuck and feel time-poor or money-poor, unhappy, lost or anything else, you must first realise and admit that you have chosen this experience for yourself. This may be a totally unconscious choice but it is still coming from you, or an aspect of you. Only by owning the experience can you change it. You cannot change anything that you reject because you reject a part of yourself, your Divine Self, which is part of the Great All-That-Is, All-That-Is-Not.

God is everything, the alpha and the omega, the light and the dark. This has been said before, many times, in a myriad of different ways. However, how often do we each stop to acknowledge the absolute profundity of this statement. How often do we rail against the less than pleasant conditions of our lives and bemoan our fate?

We must give thanks for each and every experience we have, for it is a gift. That is the first thing to remember.

Secondly, we must seek to understand that life is a dichotomy, an experience within which two apparently contradictory truths can exist in the same space at the same time.

“[You] cannot choose to be magnificent unless there is something to choose from. Some part of [you] must be less than magnificent for [You] to choose the part of [You] that is magnificent.” – Conversations with God, Book 3

We cannot know rich in the absence of poor, we cannot know light without the presence of darkness, we cannot know love without hate. And yet, we do not have to remain in any "negative" experience longer than we choose for it to be so. The human spirit rises, it does not fall in the face of true opportunity.

Embrace the part of life that is hurting or harming you in some way. Do not resist it, because what you resist persists! Only in a neutral, open state can you allow another possibility to flow to you. This can admittedly be hard, especially if you are used to doing things a certain way and thinking certain thoughts that accompany each behaviour; for example, “this is the way life is” and “this is way its always been done” and "there's no way I can change this."

And yet, if you do not realise your own divinity, and seek to consciously direct your thoughts, your life will continue to be the same.

Remember that past conditions and behaviour are not indicators of Present Truth or Reality. They are only to be used as a basis for asking questions and seeing the grander whole.

Your life is a moving spiral of energy, so if a problem represents itself time and again, the opportunity will always be to see it from a larger, grander, higher viewpoint.

The invitation is to go within and feel your inner truth about who you really are. Who are you choosing to be today in relation to each person, circumstance or event that happens? Who are you choosing to "be"?

Use the illusion to set you free from past behaviours that have kept you stuck.

Be The Architect of Your Reality

"If two [thought and feeling] make peace with each other in this one house [body-mind], they will say to the mountain [block/obstacle/illness/difficult circumstance] 'move away' and it will move away." Nag Hammadi Libaray, verse 48

There are essentially two types of feeling we can have at any given moment in time. One being the feeling of love which leads to peaceful, harmonious outcomes, or the lack of love (which we may call fear or hate) which leads to destructive patterns of behaviour and negative outcomes.

In our day to day lives, we tend to use the words "feeling" and "emotion" interchangeably but, although related, they are quintessentially different. In essence, it is the feeling we have which causes us to experience our emotion. We constantly have thoughts and we energise them through our feelings, creating a positive or negative effect in our heart, mind, body and our reality.

We are all conscious beings, living in a physical body but we do not all yet own our ability to direct our consciousness. All too often, we are caught up in our own misbeliefs, the misbeliefs of others and the negative energies of the world around us.

For things to change for the better, we must endeavour to become aware of our thoughts and feelings moment to moment. This takes constant practise and vigilance but the rewards are truly great because we can free ourselves from the prison of our minds.

Without awareness, we cannot change. It is our greatest gift to be self-aware. We need the desire to change and we must maintain our focus, directing our attention to our preferred outcome.

Listening to any inner guidance is crucial to maintain our direction because life is a dynamic interplay of seen and unseen forces, dancing the eternal dance, moving across the boundaries of our space-time reality.

We steer our ship on the ocean of life and we must keep watch, adjusting the rudder to keep ourselves on track, moving us safely and with the least effort to where we wish to go.

Many people have been made aware of the power of the Law of Attraction and have reacted strongly to it. Some have been relieved and empowered to recreate their vision of life, whilst others have been frightened and angry, believing it is too much responsibility to adapt to.

In essence, the Law says that whatever we give our attention to, we create, whether wanted or unwanted. This can understandably be a shock, especially when we begin to realise just how many negative thoughts and feelings we have during each day.

Luckily, it must be said that most people currently do not direct sufficient, sustained energy to their thoughts and feelings to cause destruction to themselves and others. So they must repeat a negative thought, and accompanying feeling, many, many times for it to become part of the fabric of their reality.

A thought without the necessary feeling and emotion to actualise it is a wish; a fanciful thought, if you will.

When we marry our thoughts with a sufficiently strong feeling, we get a chain reaction cascading through our mind and body. The amount of energy we experience coursing through our energy system is always proportionate to the feeling.

Beliefs create our feeling about something or someone, and they are fluid. It can also be said that our current beliefs are based on our level of consciousness. As we raise the bar, old, limiting beliefs drop away to be replaced by ones that serve us better.

We must all purify our hearts and minds to really take advantage of the great gifts of enjoying our ability to focus our attention and direct our will to bring forth our highest and most joyful outcomes. The only thing separating us from what we want and desire is us, and all of the negative programming that is in our cellular memory.

We are all self-programming each and every day, whether we realise it or not. If you read the newspaper every day, ask yourself, "do I believe in all of the hate, conflict, sorrow and ego-ism that afflicts much of the world or do I believe in the goodness and kindness of the world and our ability to transcend our self-imposed limitations?"

Are you telling yourself that the world "is going to the dogs" or are you looking for all of the benevolence, kindness and love that mankind/womankind is giving to his/her fellow brothers and sisters?

Ask yourself, in each situation, "which perspective am I choosing right now?" "What do I truly believe?"

Are you watching too many dime-a-dozen soaps filled with conflict, despair, and separation as its main themes, feeding your unconscious desire to act in ways that separate you from the ones you love the most? Are you learning, or reinforcing, your modes of behaviour from the TV Programs you watch?

We can, and must, reprogram ourselves to think, feel and act differently; and you can start today, if you choose to.

The best times to re-program the mind are in the morning as soon as you open your eyes and just before you close your eyes to go to sleep. The subconscious is more amenable to suggestion because the conscious mind is not fully engaged and we can take great advantage of this.

Advertisers take advantage of you when you watch TV because your brain drops from beta state to alpha or even lower, depending on how tired you are. That is negative programming, causing you to want things you don't really need and repeat modes of behaviour that are not conducive to a joyous, loving and peaceful life.

I have found re-programming statements to be extremely effective when working with SRT and Reiki clients and would like to share this with you, so that you can choose to start now, if you so wish.

I invite you to start off with something you want to really want to change; for example, a lot of us have the unconscious belief that we must suffer on some level, called a self-punishment program in SRT terminology. Search deeply, and you may find it is true for you.

Saying the statements in the order shown is an effective way to bring about a positive change in your thoughts and feelings but it is essential that you connect to the words through your heart, and not just say them like a robot!

The first two statements release the negative pattern, and the last statement replaces the negative pattern with a positive one.

"I release all belief, perception and judgement that I must suffer"
"I release all need and desire to suffer"
"I now completely accept and believe, and instruct my subconscious mind to believe, that men, women and God support and love me in my life."

You may choose the word "life" instead of "God", if you are more comfortable with that:

"I now completely accept and believe, and instruct my subconscious mind to believe, that men, women and Life support me unconditionally. I am loved."

The word God, unfortunately, is loaded with negative perceptions and judgements just as much as positive ones, which is why I have chosen the word "Life" as a possible substitute. When we replace the world God with Life, the meaning becomes a little clearer. God is simply life expressing itself, to know itself, and return to itself having gained the experience of knowing itself.

Even in our modern world, with all of its technology and advancement, we have failed to remember who we truly are and continue to deny who we are because our early programming says otherwise. Most of us seem to be half asleep, trying to get through the day, rather than trying to learn something from each day that we are blessed to live.

We seem to be quick to judge and dismiss that which cannot be "proven" by our science and technology. Yet, so much of our lives is based on the intangible thoughts, feelings and beliefs that underpin our entire existence and expression. These things are real but we cannot prove them because our technology cannot begin to compare to the inbuilt technology that lies within us:

"Your experience and your feelings about a thing represent what you factually and intuitively know about that thing. Words can only seek to symbolise what you know, and can often confuse what you know."
Conversations with God, Neale Donald Walsch

How we interact with our world is governed by our core beliefs about ourselves and our lives, which ultimately lead us to our experiences.

We need to reflect on life's journey, where it has already taken us and where it can take us. Ask yourself, "what are my beliefs about my closest relationships?" "What do I feel about those people and situations that are foremost in my mind?" "How can I change my perception?" "Can I forgive and move on?"

Ask yourself, "do I get up every morning and feel excited about the possibilities that life has to offer me?"

Asking pertinent questions of oneself is key to breaking limiting patterns of behaviour. Listening to and acting on one's higher purpose is essential to creating a life filled with joy, love and harmony. We can achieve our goals the hard way, or we can invite the presence and power of our higher nature to be with us and guide us in our thoughts, feelings and actions.

As Mahatma Ghandi said: "Carefully watch your THOUGHTS, for they become your WORDS. Manage and watch your WORDS, for they will become your ACTIONS. Consider and judge your ACTIONS, for they have become your HABITS. Acknowledge and watch your HABITS, for they shall become your VALUES. Understand and embrace your VALUES, for they become YOUR DESTINY."

The power of thought and emotion must be channelled and focused for it to serve us in our lives. Clarity comes from a release of discordant energy through awareness of what needs to change, the desire to grow and evolve to a more expansive state and the faith that we can achieve this in our lifetime.

Faith transcends our beliefs. We may believe that something is true because of a direct or indirect experience of it but, ultimately, faith is the feeling that we can achieve something despite all evidence to the contrary. The best way to nurture faith is to go inward and search for the ultimate presence that has always existed within you, one that is timeless, birthless and deathless.

Trust that you can find your inner strength and power, and it shall be revealed to you in due course. Let us trust ourselves again, let us trust life again, forgiving ourselves and all of the hurts of the past to embrace a new and glorious future.